These are the facts

 #1 A friend brought a flower bouquet to our Christmas in July party.

#2 Thing Two has gone through at least 7 tissues this morning.

#3 He did not take allergy meds yesterday.

Conclusion, in his own words: 

One of these days I'm gonna sneeze out my esophagus. 

Teas, continued

This one was last Thursday, so Day 8- Genmaicha Yama- "green tea and roasted rice." Not gonna lie; I did not have high hopes for this one. It tasted like green tea and smelled like cooked rice. Nuff said. I guess truth in advertising DOES exist!

As you have perhaps guessed, Day 9 was delightful. So much so that a friend joined me for tea. However, I did not swim in HIS drink. Oh well. Upon fishing out my unfortunate fruit fly friend, I finished my passionflower, valerian and chamomille tea. It was quite pleasant!

Day 10 was oolong, flowers, and lemon and I enjoyed it so much that I made a second cup. It's called Dreamy Tea by The Des Songes and you can check all of these out here if you're interested. I'll also confess to forgetting to have Day 10 ON Day 10 so I had it on Day 11.

Day 11 Hmm, my teabag scribble says "11 on 12" so I must have pushed this one back a day also. Oh, that's right. I thought about it before bed and didn't want to try it then. It was Jardin tropical so that translates to "tropical garden" and contained "exotic fruits." It smelled amazing and I'll probably make a second cup of that at some point. Tasted good too!

Day 12 was Earl Grey so I channeled my inner Captain Jean-Luc Picard and murmured, "tea, Earl Grey, hot" to nobody in particular, twice, and was relieved that it tasted less of bergamot than it smelled. It's not my favorite scent and I was a little alarmed at how strongly scented it was, but it settled down and was a cozy mug of tea.

Day 13 was another double cupper. It's Hammam Tea which was a green tea with flowers including roses and red fruit. So pretty in my mug and delightful to drink so I did it again.

I'm drinking Day 14 right now- China Yunnan "Pu erh Imperial" on my teabag I guess translates to Imperial tea of some kind. The tag says, "dark tea ideal after a meal" so I'm enjoying it now that I've had my lunch. It reminds me of the Celestial Seasonings Morning Thunder black tea I have, "with energizing roasted mate" though that e should have an accent mark on it and I don't know how to add that. It's not thick but it FEELS dense like it could almost be a broth if it tried a little harder. 

What are YOU drinking to stay cozy? 

 

A gorgeous glimpse

My poor flowers. They've been mostly neglected, yet somehow this beauty appeared and made me smile. Thanks, Foxglove, for hanging in there and being your vibrant self!

 

Springtime loveliness

I love the flowers at our house. These are Japanese meadowsweet, I think- some sort of butterfly bush. If I was a bee, I'd hang out on these with my friends and giggle about being tickled. Don't they look like such fun!?

This gorgeous moth had me fooled. I thought he was a leaf and I bent to swipe at him before I realized he was holding on tight in the cross breeze through the garage. He stayed put all day before heading off to adventure elsewhere. Such a fancy friend!

Blackberry blossoms, above, are beautiful! I had no idea! And the photo below is also some kind of berry blossom. I must have missed them blooming before, because I was unaware that they were growing in a spot on the side of our property until all of a sudden there were white blossoms but not where our black raspberries are... yippie!!

 

No cartoons were harmed in the taking of this photo

 And any resemblance to South Park's Kenny is purely coincidental.

It's COLD out there! We object. It's time for flowers!

Sit-rep

 Not much to report as we're in various stages of "my throat is getting scratchy" and "I can't breathe out of the right side of my head" and "I didn't sleep well last night." Germs are making their rounds, again, and I'm slated to be in preschool next week so I'm trying to get everyone healthy here before bringing home fresh, new germs. Dada's been in town, which is always nice, and the sun is attempting to shine more brightly, which is definitely welcome. It's not supposed to be above freezing here at night for at least the next week, so we'll take our wins where we can get them. I can't WAIT to rescue my sundresses from winter storage, but I know we have a ways to go yet. Some of us are counting down the days until spring break, which don't align this year, so I'll be up early every morning anyway. It's all good. Thankful for heat and sunshine and spring flowers and hot, running water and friends who send funny texts and that we have lots of boxes of tissues. And for cheese. 

A Scottish flower post

My family teases me regularly because my photo storage from my phone has not saved or whatever for a good 600+ days. I have too many photos, many of them nature-related, and they give me grief about "how many sky pictures do you need? How many flowers? Why are there pictures of bugs? Mother!"

I can't help it. Sign me up for an intervention.

Anyway, the photo above (which may be the one I'm proudest of- not bad for a phone picture) is of a thistle (Scotland's national flower) in the foreground and Stirling Castle in the background. Just the castle itself is going to take more than one post as I took a tour and tramped all over the place and then I remembered that Tino wasn't in any of the pictures so I retraced some steps and took even more photos.

But that is not this post.

This one is of some of the lovely flowers I encountered, so if you're not a flower person I hereby give you permission to skip it. No worries.

Above, a Blueblossom and below, a diligent Scottish bee working on a thistle.

These possibly had nametags which I didn't have the foresight to take pictures of, so I dunno what they are, but they're in part of the impressive Queen's Gardens at Stirling Castle.

This tree, (feel free to click on the photo), has a sign saying

"Apple 'Stirling Castle' First Raised in 1831 Cambuskenneth"

Seeing as my great grandmother Frances was born in 1900, that's one seasoned apple tree!

Roses and a view of the walls to give a little idea of height.

Above, a Catawba rosebay which is apparently a fancy way of saying it's a kind of rhododendron.

Below, my app says these are European Beech.

Above, Oriental poppies.

Tino with a Blueblossom, below.

Above, Colorado blue columbine and hybrid tea roses below

Another view of the gardens. The sheer wall up to the right leads to the balcony off the nursery where the children played, up high, no doubt overheard by the women lounging about in the Queen's Gardens.

Looking forward to sharing more of Scotland with you!

 

When life gives you fog

Today started off with a two hour fog delay which turned into a "the fog is still too bad so now it's a stay at home" day. I took advantage of the morning mist since I had to take the trash out anyway and got some dewy spring pictures.

I just love morning light. And strings of drops on spiderwebs. And dew on flowers. The birds were out, but the closest lovely blue jay was being camera shy and the cardinals were too far out of range to capture. We have two white squirrels, believe it or not, as well as many brown and gray ones. I didn't see any bunnies this morning, but they probably saw me and went the other way. Honey stared at me like I'd lost my mind as I tramped around in the damp with my phone. I'm looking forward to the Virginia spring beauty, the violets, the buttercups, and the irises. I did take a picture of what I discovered was hairy bittercress but I wasn't sure anyone but me really wanted to see it, haha. We also have common yarrow growing out back, which reminds me of tiny ferns. I've got to get our seeds started! Eek!

 

Aiiiiiiieeeee, it's May!

You know those days where you have a plan and are all set to accomplish everything you think you need to do for that day? You know how those days never seem to work out so that you do actually accomplish said plan?

Today is that day. 

I had in mind that I would accomplish more of this:

The above picture is about a day and a half of wallpaper removal. First of all, why is there even wallpaper? Why not just hand people Sharpies and let them go to town and then paint over it, again and again, around and around we go?

And secondly, why is there wallpaper again?

After shunting all 3Thingz out the door to school, I tackled the dishwasher and the dishes that needed washed by hand. They'd been sitting around since Saturday's party for Carrie. Objects like both crock pots. Don't judge. They were soaking.  And I threw in a load of laundry. And crossed my fingers that the trash wouldn't get blown to kingdom come. Then I left the house. 

 After breakfast out with my girl Zita which was then followed by a trip to Panera for gift cards, I came home to an unscheduled game of 52 Pick Up:

Drat that Ohio wind. I realize we are not the only people who experience this problem. However, I am a rather rabid recycler, which means our bin is almost always 2/3 full or we don't even put it out. So when we DO put it out and the wind is coming from the north or the east out of Mordor, I tend to scream, "are you even kidding me?!" which usually leads into  bad words.

During my impromptu Trash Bash, a dump truck sped along at at least the 50 mph that marks our road and knocked the bin over again while I was right there, I confess I didn't fully appreciate the tiny wildflowers that are dotting our field of dreams mud. I was more worried about sinking, like Atreyu's horse in "The Never Ending Story."

After yanking the recycling bin back down the driveway, still full, and putting it in time out until next week and then stomping my way back inside, I transferred the laundry to the dryer, loaded up my teacher appreciation basket and headed back out. I dropped that off at the school and then continued on to Walmart with its assorted fun and games. 

Now I'm finally home, the groceries are unloaded and the laundry is folded and put away, but the kids are already on the bus en route home and I haven't even started on the rest of the wallpaper:

And somebody is pouting that I never play with him. He's also ticked because he's been sequestered to one room (as he eats everything including wallpaper adhesive) though it happens to be the room where I'll be working next...

Not that it's all about me, but if the Second Coming were to happen anytime soon, it had better be sometime other than in May! 

A little color for November

A shout out to my sweet Aunt Barbie and Uncle John who sent some lovely flowers. I inspected them and murmured, "huh! So that's what cabbage roses look like." I'd seen them mentioned in books but never in real life before. Pretty cool! Thanks, you guys!

Waitaminute, what's that doing here? We have rum after all!?

Getting through November, folks. Whatever it takes. ;)

Not 45 minutes ago I mentioned how things still looked green. Apparently those were the magic words because now it is snowing with a vengeance and I should have kept my big, fat mouth shut. Crivens!

Guest post, photos by Damon

"Oh the weather outside is frightful..."

I figured everyone could use something warm and colorful to look at before I attempt to clear some photos off of my phone in order to free up some storage. These were taken at the White Turkey Drive-In in Conneaut, Ohio by Damon in July when we picked him up from a stay at Pap's. Someone has an appreciation for flowers. 

This last one was taken at Camp Lambec in Pennsylvania. That's Lake Erie behind us. It's one of too few pictures we have featuring all of us. 

Maybe this kiddo will follow in his uncle's footsteps and work in photography someday. Or maybe he just liked sneaking off with my phone...